Curry is such a varied cuisine that it may feel infinite…. but is it?

In the distinguished company of Archimedes – and Professor Ian Rumfitt, Senior Research Fellow, All Souls College Oxford – Good Korma travels the path to infinite knowledge.

When Archimedes experienced his famous ‘Eureka’ moment, he was at home, in Sicily ­- lying comfortably in his bath.

When I experienced my micro-Eureka moment, I was in Chennai Dosa restaurant in Tooting Bec – staring at a glass of Kingfisher.

It was a Saturday evening, and while billions of people were going about their daily lives, I was fretting about my relationship with infinity.

For months, I’ve wanted to write a curry blog, titled ‘A taste for infinity’. I want the blog to explain that part of my love of Indian food is driven by the sheer limitlessness of South Asian cuisine… by the existence of hundreds of original Indian ingredients, captured in hundreds of thousands of cookbooks, cooked via tens of millions of recipes – and interpreted by over a billion Indians.

For me, exploring Indian cooking is like looking at the Milky Way… and I want to share this sense of wonder with other curryphiles.

Even with one hundred lifetimes dedicated to cooking curry, I’d still only be scratching the surface.

But here’s the snag – whenever I sit down to tackle the ‘infinity’ blog, I realise I am totally unqualified to write it. Leaving aside the question of how much I do or don’t know about curry, the fact remains that – as a human being – I simply don’t ‘get’ infinity.

Let me unpack this…

My instinct is that asking a homo sapiens to explain infinity is like asking a snowflake to explore the nature of heat, or asking a kitchen sieve to understand the properties of water. The one is just not equipped to understand the other.

Let’s face it… as a species, we human beings are so gloriously finite!

Am I alone in thinking that the whole of human civilisation might turn out to be a match-flame in a minor galaxy… with a single human life counting for less than a ten-billionth of that flicker? Mankind may hunger for the infinite, but all the evidence is that we are as transient as mayflies.

And even if we were presented with the gift of infinity, would we know what to do with it?

If life on Earth were followed by an infinite existence somewhere else – wonders Barnes – could we hack it?

The novelist thinks the answer is ‘no’. Whatever your passion, whatever your thirst for the absolute – Barnes argues that even the intellectual giants of human history would find infinity too much to bear in the end.

The following are the last lines in the book – a conversation between Barnes and his heavenly guide:

‘So … even people, religious people, who come here to worship God throughout eternity … they end up throwing in the towel after a few years, hundred years, thousand years?’

‘Certainly. As I said, there are still a few Old Heaveners around, but their numbers are diminishing all the time.’

Human beings, it seems, just don’t have an appetite for infinity.

The next question is whether human beings have the grey matter to understand what infinity is, or might be?

It’s not obvious.

Here’s a very simple example that I read recently in the press – two smart people debating the nature of infinity. The point they agree on is that numbers are infinite. They also agree that within any group of numbers, there will be a smaller total of prime numbers (e.g. 168 primes up to number 1,000). The point where they fall out is that SmartPerson A is convinced that composite (non-prime) numbers must somehow be ‘more infinite’ than primes. “They happen more often; there’s got to be more of them.”

For me, their debate suggests than even our simplest instincts about infinity may be wrong.

But does their conversation also point towards a wider question: is infinity simply too big a thought to fit inside human heads?

Oddly enough, Archimedes himself could probably have helped.

The famous physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer (287 to 212 BC) not only gave us the famous Eureka moment – but also built the foundations for a lot of modern mathematics. He anticipated modern calculus, as well as proving the area of a circle via an accurate approximation of pi. And when he wasn’t designing innovative gadgets like the screw pump – and war machines to protect his home city of Syracuse – Archimedes was working on a system for expressing very large numbers.

But I’m more than two thousand years too late to talk to him. And whenever I sit down to write the ‘infinity’ blog, I stop.

Until my micro-Eureka moment in Chennai Dosa.

I am reading a thoughtful, heart-felt piece in the Guardian by Karl Ove Knausgaard ‘What makes life worth living?’ in which the writer praises the nature of everyday objects – in the form of a letter to his unborn baby.

Ranging from the quiet beauty of plastic bags to the solace of beds, Knausgaard delivers some pretty good stuff. And as I read the final paragraph of the last of the seven sections (on Faces), he socks it to me:

“Whatever is human is changeable, it is mobile, and it is unfathomable.”

Eureka!

Just stick the word ‘infinitely’ into that sentence– and I have my answer:

As human beings, we may not understand infinity as a concept – but we embody it in our infinite changeability and infinite unknowability.

BOOM.

Infinities R Us.

And as an infinitely unfathomable human being, I feel entitled to write my blog on the infinity of curry.

Postscript…

With the blog written, and my finger hovering over ‘publish’ – the Guardian chooses to blow me away with new research suggesting that the number zero (and therefore the concept of infinity itself) is an Indian invention!

Deciphering a parchment document (dated via radio carbon technology to the third or fourth century AD) British scholars have recently proved that a dot on the text is the birth of the concept of zero:

“The development of zero as a mathematical concept may have been inspired by the region’s (India’s) long philosophical tradition of contemplating the void and may explain why the concept took so long to catch on in Europe, which lacked the same cultural reference points.

“Despite developing sophisticated maths and geometry, the ancient Greeks had no symbol for zero, showing that while the concept zero may now feel familiar, it is not an obvious one.

“The development of zero in mathematics underpins an incredible range of further work, including the notion of infinity, the modern notion of the vacuum in quantum physics, and some of the deepest questions in cosmology of how the Universe arose – and how it might disappear from existence in some unimaginable future scenario.”

Not only is infinity legitimate fodder for a curry blog… it turns out that India invented infinity itself!

A brief guide to infinity

“The topic remains difficult. I confine myself to some remarks about the debate between the two ‘smart people’ that Adam recalls reading about.

“Debates of this kind go back to antiquity but a famous example is found in Galileo’s dialogue, Two New Sciences, of 1638. To establish that two finite collections have the same number of members (i.e. the same size or ‘cardinality’), it suffices to show that there is a one-one correspondence between the members of the two collections. Thus, to show that the collection of canonical gospels has the same size as the collection of Brahms’s symphonies, it suffices to pair St Matthew’s Gospel with the C minor Symphony, St Mark’s with the D major, St Luke’s with the F major, and St John’s with the E minor. In Two New Sciences, Salviati (who is the spokesman for Galileo’s mature views) observes that apparently paradoxical results arise when the same method is applied to infinite collections. Consider two such collections: the positive integers, 1,2,3,…; and the perfect squares, 1,4,9,… There is a one-one correspondence between these collections: 1 pairs with 1, 2 with 4, 3 with 9; quite generally, n pairs with n2. Applying the method, then, we infer that the collection of positive integers has the same size as the collection of perfect squares. Salviati, however, finds this result paradoxical, for the collection of perfect squares is a proper part of the collection of positive integers. Every perfect square is a positive integer, but not every positive integer is a perfect square. The result that the two collections have the same size, then, contradicts Euclid’s Fifth Axiom: ‘the whole is greater than the (proper) part’.

“The moral that Salviati, alias Galileo, draws from the paradox is that it makes no sense to assign sizes to infinite collections. In a way, this conclusion makes sense: to call a collection ‘infinite’ is precisely to deny that it has any definite size. In the 19th century, however, the German mathematician Georg Cantor argued that some collections—among them, the positive integers—do not conform to Euclid’s Fifth Axiom. Yes, the positive integers contain the perfect squares as a proper part, but precisely because there is a one-one correspondence between them, the two collections have the same size or cardinality.

“On this basis, Cantor developed a theory of precise sizes or cardinalities, each of which was larger than any of the natural numbers. Respecting the point that ‘infinite’ implies a denial of definite size, he called these cardinalities ‘transfinite’. The cardinality of the natural numbers, which Cantor called ‘Aleph Null’, À0, is the smallest of them. Cantor postulated an unending series of larger and larger alephs.

“Fellow mathematicians were initially sceptical but were gradually won round as it became clear that Cantor’s theory was not only consistent but could be used to solve problems that had been formulated before its invention. However, the series of alephs remains in some crucial respects mysterious. By way of his celebrated ‘diagonal argument’, Cantor argued that the collection of real numbers was strictly larger than that of the natural numbers. He showed, in fact, that the reals have cardinality 2À0. The question then arises where this cardinality stands in the sequence of alephs. Cantor conjectured that it was the next largest aleph after Aleph Null. That is, he hypothesized that 2À0 = À1. However, this ‘Continuum Hypothesis’ has been shown to be undecidable on the basis of currently accepted mathematics.

“Basic questions about the transfinite, let alone the genuinely infinite, lie beyond the range of the methods mathematicians now have at their disposal.”

Vivek Singh’s new hardback may look like a cookbook – but between the mouth-watering recipes, it’s also a spell-binding look at the nature of human connections… and how food is the force that links us all.

In an exclusive interview, Vivek Singh lifts the lid on his spectacular, thought-provoking Indian Festival Feasts.

As she pulls the hardback from the row of Indian cookbooks, the young salesperson bursts into an amazed smile: “Wow,” she gasps, “what a beautiful book!”

It truly is.

Like a paint-spattered guest at a Holi party, the cover of Indian Festival Feasts is daubed in pinks, purples and oranges. Vivek Singh’s new book is a very, very pretty thing.

Hurrying down Piccadilly with my copy, I dived into the first restaurant I came to (a dim sum bar in Chinatown) and started reading. Taking my order, the waitress moved behind me so she could read the book right-way-up. “India,” she said, “so beautiful”. Within minutes, people eating at tables six feet away were craning their necks to see the pages, and waiting for me to turn.

In a lifetime of book-buying, I’ve never seen a reaction like it.

Clearing a space among the dishes for my phone, I type a congratulatory tweet to @chefviveksingh: “BLOWN AWAY by your Indian Festival Feasts. My library of Indian cookbooks just discovered its most important volume.”

My phone pings.

“Oh wow, thank you Adam! Delighted with the praise! How are you keeping?”

After five baskets of dim sum, two portions of chilli oil and a half-bottle of warm sake – I have devoured Indian Festival Feasts from cover to cover. And I am genuinely blown away. Over thirteen chapters, Vivek Singh’s book introduces you to five faiths in India (Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism and Christianity) and the food that expresses their most important festivals. The thirteenth chapter invites you to share in a Bengali wedding.

As you’d expect from the chef who single-handedly reinvented Indian cuisine in the UK, the book is full of stunning recipes. More surprisingly, perhaps, it’s also full of very personal elements about Vivek Singh himself: his childhood, career, family and friendships. Skipping between the chapters on Holi, Eid al-Fitr, Diwali and Easter, there’s a strong sense that Vivek Singh wants Indian Festival Feasts to share a lifetime’s thinking about how food defines who we are.

Ten days after buying the book, I’m sitting with him in the bar of the Cinnamon Club – together with a copy of Indian Festival Feasts. The author is kindly making time before a busy dinner service to explain the ingredients and flavours of his new book.

Good Korma: Where were you when the first spark for the book came to you?

Vivek Singh: My wife and I had just been to the launch of my book Spice at Home. We were walking home late at night, hand-in-hand, when she asked me if I thought I would write another recipe book. That was the spark.

Every couple of months, I talk to my publishers – and they often ask me about what my next book might be. They pointed out that in media interviews I often go back to the Indian festivals that I enjoyed in my youth. At the same time, Firdaus Takolia, who worked with me then as my PA, started talking to me about writing on Indian festivals.

All those thoughts came together in Indian Festival Feasts. Once that door had opened, a flood of recipes and ideas started to come in from colleagues and friends. The task then became honing all of those suggestions into one book.

Good Korma: What’s your favourite piece of feedback to date on Indian Festival Feasts?

Vivek Singh: My publisher told me: “This is a happy book… a book that really brings people together”.

Good Korma: So how do you want the book to touch people?

Vivek Singh: I’m not really trying to tell people about the religious origins or the purpose of these festivals. The common thread is how the food which is the expression of these festivals has the power to bring people together. The feasts don’t just connect families, friends and faiths – but whole communities, and multitudes of faiths.

Growing up as a child in Bengal, I saw how the food from each festival brought people together to cook and celebrate – Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Sikhs. What connects us is so much more than what divides us. That’s what I hope people will take from the book… that food can transcend religion as a connecting force.

Good Korma: That’s a big thought. Why is food so woven into Indian life?

Vivek Singh: Is it something around anthropology…the way that Indian society works? I was very lucky to grow up in a diverse society – and at the time I was growing up, a very significant part of the population was engaged in the full time activity of staying at home and cooking. My mother was a full time home-maker – and in an age before refrigeration and daily shopping, cooking was a way of life. Food is part of the way India lives and breathes.

Good Korma: Looking at Indian Festival Feasts, I don’t feel as if I’m reading about India… I’m actually in India! The noise, the colour, the smells. Did you set out to create something immersive?

Vivek Singh: What I hope comes through in the book is my own experience of India. It’s a complete melting pot of cultures, and it’s the place that shaped me. It may not be everyone’s experience of India – including some of the people growing up there today – but it’s mine.

Good Korma: If a reader wanted to experience one festival, in one Indian city – where would you send them?

Vivek Singh: Hyderabad, for Eid al-Fitr or Eid al-Adha. I remember living and working there, and during those two festivals, Hyderabad becomes meatopia! There are people outside the mosques, distributing food to the whole community – regardless of who’s been fasting and who hasn’t. As I explain in the book, it wasn’t until I worked as a trainee in the Oberoi Hotel that I realised I’d never experienced aromas or sheer passion for food and flavours like the ones I discovered in Hyderabad. The city has all the sights, colours and smells you expect from India – but it has added complexity of the Muslim cooking. Old and new Hyderabad are different universes.

Good Korma: In the first recipe in the book, you mention Litti Chokha as your “inheritance dish” – and describe cooking it over bonfires with your Dad. Have you introduced it to people in your restaurants?

Vivek Singh: Actually, Litti Chokha has never been on any of my restaurant menus – and there’s a reason for that. When you really love something, and it means a lot to you – you’re not prepared to sell it. Some people eating Litti Chokha in a restaurant might get it… but the moment that money changes hands there’s going to be a judgement.

What is Litti Chokha? It’s chapatti flour dough, which is starch… filled with chickpeas, which is more starch. People might look at it and think it’s too rustic, too earthy, too nomadic – and I don’t need that. Not everything’s for sale.

Good Korma: For someone coming to Indian food for the first time, which two recipes in Indian Festival Feasts would you point them to?

Vivek Singh: Mutton Biryani with Dried Fruits, and Kashmiri Spices, and Chicken Butter Masala. Biryani is a regulation dish at Indian celebrations, and this recipe is made even more special with dried fruit and nuts. In the east of India, Butter Masala is the dish that restaurants are judged on – and I learnt to cook this dish from the banquet cooks who catered for the 1,200 people at my sister’s wedding. I’d like to share both dishes with the reader.

Good Korma: In the foreword, you warn the reader that: “not all of the recipes listed in this book are ones that you will immediately fall in love with”, and that some recipes will take years to master. How high were you trying to set the bar?

Vivek Singh: The idea was to represent the celebration, and the specific dishes that express it. I wasn’t looking at a certain level of skill, or at a set of ingredients. As a result, some of the recipes are very straightforward, but others take years of practice… and very few people will go there. That’s OK.

Good Korma: What can a recipe book teach you… and what can’t it teach?

Vivek Singh: A recipe book can teach you the mechanics of putting a dish together, but you can’t teach someone to feel. Feeling is about expressing where the dish is from, and where it’s going. It’s about everything the cook is trying to express in that dish.

Good Korma: The food photography in the book is refreshingly realistic… the food actually looks like food.

Vivek Singh:Indian Festival Feasts isn’t a restaurant cook book – with restaurant-style plating. To create the sense of a domestic feast, we’ve deliberately gone for a home-style look to the food.

Good Korma: In your book, you’ve created a snapshot of India and its festivals as they are today. Were you trying to create a record of the festivals and their food?

Vivek Singh: Things are constantly adapting. For much of the 4000-year history of Indian food, we considered the splitting of milk to be inauspicious, then along came the Portuguese and introduced us to cheese. Today, India’s favourite national dessert is probably rosogolla – made from Indian cottage cheese – even though some people might think it is sacrilege.

My wife and I were having this conversation just last week – that potatoes, chillies and tomatoes only have a 300-year history in India. The food changes constantly – and so will the festivals.

Vivek Singh: India is changing every day – but if you go looking for timeless India, you will find it. I’ve seen so much change in India, but also seen so many things remain the same.

Good Korma: Reading Indian Festival Feasts, it’s touching how you credit whole chapters to friends and colleagues. You credit the chapter on Onam to Rakesh Ravindran Nair, and you christen one dish Hari’s Hyderabadi Kachi Biryani after Hari Nagaraj – both of whom have worked with you for a long time at the Cinnamon Club.

Vivek Singh: It’s my way of acknowledging all the support I’ve had. I’m lucky enough to have my name on the cover, but so many people helped. I hope that crediting my friends helps to make the book more timeless.

Good Korma: Your credit to Firdaus Takolia is pretty unique for an author. You say: “I’m not wrong in feeling that Indian Festival Feasts is as much her book as it’s mine”.

Vivek Singh: Firdaus was involved in Indian Festival Feasts for almost a year and a half. I’d write a chapter, and it was Firdaus who’d send them to the publisher, help with the queries, check the recipes, shop for prop and select the photos. We share the book.

Good Korma: Time and again, Indian Festival Feasts brings the reader back to the connections between people. What has life taught you about human connections?

Vivek Singh: I’ve learnt that simple things like where you grew up and what you do are important. But in this day and age, physical presence and geographical locations do not mean a lot. What means a lot is who you’re connected to, and who’s in your network. For example, I could be having three different conversations with three different people in different parts of the world. I am connected to people in New York, Perth, London and India simultaneously. That’s how connections have changed.

Good Korma:Indian Festival Feasts is full of your personal connections. Does that make it a record of who you are?

Vivek Singh: Yes, the book embraces my family, my friends – and the network and communities I interacted with. These connections are unique to me.

How the Happy Mondays helped me understand the meaning of curry

You think you understand something important to you… a phrase, a concept, an idea.

And then you realise you weren’t even close! Something happens that means you have to start again, rip it up… rethink everything.

I owe the Happy Mondays for helping me rethink what curry means to me.

I’m sitting in a London curry house, March 2017, and the evening is not going according to plan. The name of the restaurant (which I won’t share) promises masala nirvana – but it turns out to be pretty much the opposite. The channa saag is maybe the worst I’ve ever eaten; the chicken jalfrezi squeaks under the fork like polystyrene.

But, hey, it’s still a curry. It’s the end of a long working day… the staff are friendly, the naan is good, and I have a bottle of Kingfisher. I’m happy.

The restaurant soundtrack is playing the classics 90s ‘Madchester’. Years back, my younger brother Tom was a student in the city at the peak of the Hacienda scene, and I rode shotgun with him and his friends for a couple of great nights out. I was probably the oldest person in the room – but no one seemed to mind.

Fast forward 20 years, and as I listen to the Madchester anthems in the restaurant, the stabbing keyboard intro of the Mondays’ Step On suddenly cuts through my bland mouthful of channa saag.

Instantly, it changes my mood.

This is music that inhabits you… music that races down your arteries. You can actually feel the melody tweaking the dials of your internal chemistry – turning everything up.

And that’s when it it hits me… THIS is what the sages of Indian cuisine mean when they describe curry as ‘Music in the Body’.

I’d always thought it was a cutesy, abstract concept… one of those trendy, physical-meets-spiritual thingies (‘Landscape of the soul’ etc). Interesting – but ultimately not connected to anything real.

But the Mondays slammed the lesson home.

‘Music in the Body’ has nothing to do with abstraction. It describes flesh-and-blood, on-your-fork reality.

‘Music in the Body’ tells you- maybe better than anything else – about the sheer, tingling delight of eating great Indian food. Curry doesn’t just thrill your senses… it thrills your being.

Your head, your mood, your heart… curry can and does change them all.

Just like great music.

And THAT is the point.

Thanks to the Mondays, I finally get it…

‘Music in the Body’ describes what would happen if you could actually pour the notes of a banging tune onto your plate… and eat them… swallow them whole! You’d wouldn’t feel the music as something semi-remote… a soundwave – but as a tangible, physical presence that inhabits your physical being. You’d feel the tune descending your throat, and literally coursing through your arteries.

That is what Music in the Body means!

And that physical sensation is what great curry means to me.

(PS. if you can translate what the Mondays mean by ‘you’re twisting my melon , man’ – please explain)

If you’re nuts about coconuts…

get your hands on the Odiris…

the greatest grater of them all!

This one is as easy as it gets… if you eat freshly-grated coconut, click here.

The miracle you’re about to connect with is the Odiris A8.

And, you should buy one.

NOW.

You’ll be very happy together.

Technically, you can call the Odiris A8 ‘a coconut grater’ – but that would be like describing the Taj Mahal as ‘a building’ or the Mona Lisa ‘a painting’.

The Odiris A8 is THE coconut grater.

It belongs to that elite group of objects… the spoon, scissors, the hammer, the wheel… which once invented, cannot be improved.

“You cannot make a spoon that is better than a spoon,” said Umberto Eco. He could say the same about the Odiris A8.

It is 4pm on a hot, sultry afternoon in Ernakulam – and things are not going according to plan. Situated a short ferry-ride from the historic city of Kochi, Ernakulam is the commercial hub for the state of Kerala. It has a bustling port, hundreds of restaurants, acres of markets – and it’s here that I’ll find the coconut grater that’s eluded me for a decade.

Why here?

Because this is the land of the coconut – quite literally.

In the local language, Malayalam – ‘Kera’ means coconut and ‘Alam’ means land – making Kerala the physical and spiritual home of the coconut. There are hard numbers to back up the claim. Of the staggering 11 million tonnes of coconuts harvested in India each year, 45% are grown in Kerala. If you’re eating a dish in India with coconut, there’s nearly a 50/50 chance it came from Kerala – via Ernakulam.

So, during my month of travels across India, I haven’t even asked to buy a coconut grater in any other city – because I’m headed for Ernakulam, global capital of the coco’. I know this place will have what I’m looking for.

Except it doesn’t.

I am in my sixth or seventh hardware shop, and a pattern is emerging. I’ll talk to the owner/manager – a large man in his forties of fifties, sitting at a tiny desk at the front of the shop – and ask him if he has a coconut grater. He nods, calls a younger man, and asks him in Malayalam to bring something from the depths of the shop. I wait excitedly – and one of two disappointments plays out.

Disappointment A: the younger guy comes back with a promising package about a foot high. It starts well as he unpacks the base (a wrought-iron worktop clamp) but then things go pear-shaped as he shows me the business end: a static, forked blade. Basically, this grater is a knife on an adjustable stick. I know from bitter experience that this won’t work. The essence of coconut grating is circular motion – and I mime this to the team. They send to the next shop.

Disappointment B: the younger guy comes from depths of the shop with a smaller package, and I know before he opens it, what it will be. It’s the rotating grater reviewed in 2017 by the Guardian’s Rhik Samadder that secures to the worktop by a suction pad. Let me be clear: Rhik is a professional reviewer of kitchen gadgetry – and he knows his onions. But Rhik, on this occasion… I humbly beg to differ. I’ve owned and used this model (which dominates the online market, and is sold right across India) and it doesn’t cut the mustard. First, the central crank soon develops a wobble – which you need to fix with a handful of extra washers. Once you’ve done this, you’re into a slow, inevitable death spiral with the suction pad. It will fail you – it’s just a question of when. And when it does, you’re left with a grater that skates around the kitchen like Robin Cousins.

And so it goes. I drag myself through the bustling streets of Ernakulam – and no one can sell me the coconut grater I have in my head. Over two hours, I’ve visited every hardware and metal shop in the coconut capital of the world, and I’m going home empty-handed.

I know what I want – but it doesn’t exist here.

Back in the 1950s, somewhere in Sri Lanka, another man was going through his own coco’ crisis.

Odiris Perera was looking at holy trinity of kitchen tools used by every housewife in Sri Lanka – the chilli grinding stone, pestle and mortar and coconut scraper – and he knew the scraper didn’t cut it.

Almost every Sri Lanka meal uses ground coconut, and for centuries the white flesh has been gouged from the shell by static metal scrapers. It’s messy, fiddly, time-consuming stuff – taking way longer than it should. The process almost puts you off coconuts altogether. I own an antique brass coconut scraper – and while I treasure it as an object, it’s defined by the word ‘pretty’. Very pretty to look at; pretty useless at what it does.

Odiris Perera took the problem by the scruff of the neck, and in 1952 this 38 year-old railway engineer experienced his coco-eureka moment. He knew the solution called for a rotating head, combined with the stability of a screw clamp. Add in world-class engineering – stainless steel blades, cast-iron body, sealed-system bearings – and you have the ultimate coconut scraping machine.

He gave the product his own name.

Sri Lanka knows a good thing when it sees it, and the Odiris-branded scraper sold from the moment it was launched.

Then, in 1959, things went viral. To quote The Nation newspaper: “[Odiris Perera] owned a small Fiat car and while participating in a motor car parade, he fitted a table onto his car and got two beautiful damsels to demonstrate coconut scraping with his machine… the following day, the picture of his car and the coconut scraping was flashed in all the newspapers in their front pages”

Odiris Perera went onto a fabulous career – not just redefining the scraper but also designing a range of breakthrough kitchen tools. In 1998, he launched a revolutionary, self-dousing kerosene lamp – giving a safe light-source to the millions of people in Asia without access to electricity. “This lamp costs only Rs 20 [20p],” said Perera, “and it was not invented with the intention of selling commercially. It was made with the purpose of giving it to the poor.”

Hallelujah.

In 2007, at the age of 94, Odiris Perera passed away – leaving a thriving pan-Asian business. To this day, he is still celebrated in Sri Lankan media as the leading entrepreneur of the post-colonial era.

Back in the UK, after my travels, I was determined not to give up. I knew my scraper was out there – somewhere.

Googling time and again with the properties I was looking for (circular action/ screw base) I finally came to the site for the Odiris Engineering Company Ltd. And there… on the homepage… it was! The machine I’d wanted, for a decade.

Just below the image of the Odiris A8 was the name and address of the EU distributor: Nishan Enterprises. I called the mobile number listed, and on the third ring spoke to the charming Nishantha Udeni. “Yes”, said Nishantha, he could send me a sample Odiris A8 to review. “Yes”, he could set up an Amazon page to bring the A8 to the UK. “And yes”, I could work on a piece with his son Pawan which would celebrate the legacy of Odiris Perera.

For me, every part of this journey has been a privilege.

So what will happen when you get your shiny new Odiris A8 though the post – and you become one of the first people in the UK to own one?

First, you will appreciate the sheer beauty of the thing – the quality of the green glaze of the metal-work, the satisfying weight and heft in your hand.

You will clamp it to a worktop (almost any surface, up to about two inches thick). Your Odiris is now as solid as a rock.

You will split your coconut with a hammer (I put mine on the floor, and strike the middle; two or three blows usually does it).

You will offer up one the freshly-split hemispheres to the scraper, and turn the handle. Soft coconut flesh will meet the Odiris – in an effortless, irresistible union – yielding a bowl of soft, white flakes.

Contemporary press reports from the media spectacular of 1959 don’t tell us exactly how the “two beautiful damsels” demonstrated the Odiris on top of his Fiat – but use the machine once, and you can use your imagination.

And that, I think, is how the coconut itself would want it to be.

For people in the West, the coconut is the tropical fruit of palms hanging at lazy angles over soft beaches and azure water. For people in East, the coconut tree is the sacred provider of food, firewood and shelter – and its fruit is an auspicious part of every celebration.

The coconut doesn’t want to be a tough nut to crack. It wants to yield to the Odiris.

Can you really put live charcoals into a curry?

Is this a living Indian culinary tradition– or just a pile of embers?

And what can YOU do to help keep the flame alive?

So that’s that… the ambitious curry I’m planning for my daughter’s dinner party is NOT going to work.

I’m talking to sharply-dressed colleague and fashion blogger Gurjeet – and he has feedback for me from a lifetime curry expert.

“She’s never heard of this technique – and she says it won’t work.”

The ‘she’ in question is Gurj’s Mum.

I know enough about curry to realise that Indian Mums are the gatekeepers of the country’s cuisine. In the centuries before recipe books and fast food, they passed the flame from generation to generation – creating the techniques and recipes which shape India’s culture. Indian Mums are the country’s culinary DNA.

So when an Indian Mum tells me a recipe won’t work – I’m listening.

But I’ve promised this specific dish to my daughter and four of her friends, as they celebrate the last week of summer before going back to university. I’ve promised them a recipe where we plunge a red-hot charcoal into the curry… and watch smoke infuse the dish.

If it works, it will be pure foodie theatre.

But to even have a chance of succeeding, I need to remember where I found the recipe.

This is trickier than it may sound.

On the shelves in our kitchen, there are over 100 Indian recipe books. At a conservative estimate, that means a library of at least 10,000 recipes. Looking at the books, I have a vague memory of turning a page and finding a recipe for smoking charcoal – but I have no idea where it is.

No sweat.

Like every modern quest for knowledge, there’s the internet.

A few minutes later, a search for ‘cooking with charcoal’ has given me 28 million results. The trouble is that Google assumes ‘cooking with charcoal’ means using it as a heat source – not an ingredient. I have millions of suggestions about how to cook food over charcoal, and precisely zero about how to cook charcoal in food.

No matter. I refine the search to ‘charcoal in food’. 19 million results – and it just gets weirder. I meet people who add powdered charcoal to their food to get healthier, and others who tell me that if I do this I will die.

For half an hour or so, I try every possible search combination I can think of for charcoal/ food/ smoke/ Indian/ recipe.

For the first time ever, the web fails me totally. The thing I’m looking for does not exist in cyberspace.

The voice of Gurj’s Mum rings in my ears.

THIS.

WON’T.

WORK.

I go back to analogue. I will have to find the recipe in one of my cookbooks.

It’s Saturday morning. My daughter and her friends come to eat this evening. I look at the bookshelves, and am consumed by panic. There’s about two metres of curry literature… I’m searching for a straw in a culinary haystack.

I make two piles of books – each about the height of a toddler: Pile A contains the cookbooks which I know really well, and where the recipe definitely won’t be; Pile B has the books I know less well, and where it might be.

For stability, Pile B builds upwards – biggest books at the bottom, smallest at the top. I skim through the pocket-sized books. Nothing. I work my way through the paperbacks (mostly Penguin India). Nada.

Which is when I ask myself… did I just dream about this recipe?

It’s happened before. I was once convinced I’d found a recipe for curried drumstick – spread on toast. It sounds delicious, but I’ve never been able to re-find it. It probably doesn’t exist.

The voice of Gurj’s Mum is now turned up to 10 in my head as I come to the coffeetable books at the base of the pile. Last and biggest of all is Christine Manfield’s magisterial Tasting India.

And as I reach page 133, my head explodes. There it is: Dry Lamb Curry, Gosht Kandahari. The text at the top of the page reads: “Adding the dhuni, a piece of hot charcoal that imparts the aromatic smoky flavour, is the magic ingredient and a really neat trick.”

I am in business.

Kind of…

As I read down the list of ingredients, I realise this may be the weirdest curry I have ever attempted. First ingredient: 300g dried pomegranate seeds. 300g! A pack of 100g of anardana normally lasts me for six months – and I’ll use three times that in one dish? Fifth ingredient: 100g of Kashmiri chilli. 100g – an entire pack, for a spice I normally add in 5ml teaspoonfuls! Eighth ingredient: 30g of long red chillies.

What is Christine trying to do to me? Is this a curry, or a weapon of mass destruction?

No matter. The show must go on.

I shop for ingredients. Amazingly, my local Indian retailer in Salisbury actually stocks the industrial quantities of anardana and Kashmiri chilli I need. But it gets trickier when I go to a hardware shop for the charcoal – there are so many types to choose from: briquettes; high-heat briquettes; self-lighting lumpwood; natural lumpwood.

The briquettes look too industrial to add to food; the self-lighting stuff stinks of paraffin. I opt for natural lumpwood. The smallest bag weighs 5kg, and I calculate on the way home that if this recipe works (if) I have enough charcoal to re-do it 5,000 times.

Show time.

Before I cook a thing, I want to rehearse the charcoal finale. Christine Manfield is crystal clear: “To prepare the dhuni, heat a piece of charcoal over a flame until it is red, then dip the charcoal in a little oil and drop it into the lamb curry.”

She is spot on.

Held in a pair of tongs over a gas flame, the charcoal takes about five minutes to turn from black to grey – then glow red hot. When it does, I take it into the garden (smoke alarm/ fire risk) and dip it nervously into a ramekin of cooking oil. The second the charcoal hits the surface, it gives off a plume or curling, white aromatic smoke.

It’s the dry-ice of Indian cooking. I am thrilled.

Several hours later, my daughter and her friends rock up at our house for dinner. The curry is a pit-stop on a day that started at lunchtime and will spill over into the next morning. To my astonishment, they are excited about the charcoal curry – and up for helping to cook it.

I am so fazed by the day’s recipe-hunting, and by the weirdness of putting nearly half a kilo of dried spices into a single dish – that my palate is shot. I just can’t taste what I’m cooking.

But the dhuni comes up trumps.

The friends take it in turns to braze the charcoal over the flame. The moment it’s dunked in oil, it throws off a column of smoke – all the way to the curry pot – where it sizzles aromatically. We pop on the lid.

Someone has filmed the moment on a phone, and it’s very pretty.

Ten minutes later, we eat the smoke-infused Gosht Kandahari together – and everyone at the table says it’s delicious.

Happy days.

The date of the dinner was August 29th, 2016 BC (Before Charcoal).

Since then, life has fed me more morsels of knowledge about the dhuni.

From knowing absolutely nothing about this obscure technique – I might now own more published fragments on the dhuni than almost anyone. Maybe?

And without wanting to, I seem to have become one of the guardians of this (tiny) eternal flame.

I feel a duty to help keep the dhuni alight.

So here’s what I’ve learnt since that first day…

In the impossibly rare Indian Muslim Cookery – a four volume masterpiece, kindly sent to me from Mumbai by food blogger Antoine Lewis – there’s a tantalising recipe for Khichda with: “5/6 pieces of burning coal.” The directions state: “Heat ghee in a pan, add cumin seed, fenugreek seed, burning coal. Then add them in the mutton vessel. Remove the coals after sometime and serve.”

As well as being impossibly hard to buy (I can find no trace of this book online – and might own the only copy in the UK) it’s also a learning curve to work from. The book reads right to left, and some terms are unfamiliar (“Onion: make barista”). Would FIVE lumps of coal really work? Do they mean coal or charcoal?

For all my quibbles, I’m desperately proud to own this box set of Bohra/ Kashmiri/ Kokani/ Memon recipes – and will definitely cook the Khichda one day.

Tucked away on page 93 of her excellent book, there might be more information about the art of cooking with smoke than in the rest of Indian cookbooks put together:

“SMOKE – the process of imparting a smoked flavour to the preparation. Heat a piece of coal over the flame until it becomes red hot. Overlap 2-3 onion peels to form a small cup. Place it in the middle of the dish, with the preparation to be smoked. Place the coal in the onion peel cup. Smoke with either of the following…”

Over half a page, Pushpita goes on to explain how cloves, garlic paste or clarified butter can each be poured over the smoking coal – to take the flavour to the next level. This is seriously delicious stuff, and I urge you to buy the book. Pushpita Singh is the Michelangelo of smoke cooking – and I salute her.

(After I’d read Rajasthani Kitchen, I happened to see the 2016 game menu for the Cinnamon Club – featuring ‘clove smoked grouse’. I’ve had the privilege of eating Chef Rakesh Nair’s game cuisine before – and would be humbled if he could share the secrets of this dish.)

And finally, because the curry journey never ends, the postman brightened up my life this week with a brand new copy of Sumayya Usmani’s sensational Summers Under the Tamarind Tree. It’s a genuinely beautiful book, full of inspirational recipes. And in the very week I find myself writing about the dhuni… Summaya tell me on page 23 that: “[smoking] is my favourite cooking method”. She goes on to share details of the smoking process, as well as a recipe for bihari kebabs. I urge you to to buy the book. I’m glad I own a copy (and slightly baffled about the timing of its arrival… as if some unseen hand is feeding my hunger for smoke).

In terms of printed evidence of the smoking technique in Indian cuisine – these three books, together with Tasting India – are the only copies I’ve held in my hand.

Back to the web.

Armed with the word ‘dhuni’ from Christine Manfield, I reckon I’m going to be able to refine my online search – and get more information.

It’s a bit of a surprise.

For the entire first page of returns, Wikipedia defines the Dhuni as: “a sacred site represented as a cleft in the ground. This cleft is emblematic of the yoni or female vulva and generative organ.”

No mention of cooking.

I wonder if Christine Manfield has been had – if some wise-cracking Indian chef or translator has fed her the wrong word in Hindi, just to see if it ends up in print?

I search on. To my relief, among the 78,000 search results on dhuni, pages 5 and 6 on Google bring it back to food: an interesting foodie blog site The Picky Bowl has a post on what looks like a sensational Dhuni Wale Rajma; while has Saransh Goila’s epic foodie travelogue India on my Platter has a Dogri recipe for dhuni using mustard oil. I have ordered the book, and can’t wait to hold it.

And that – as far as I can tell – is it.

Five books, and one blog site, which contain all recorded human knowledge of the dhuni.

I’m sure there’s more, and I look forward to discovering it.

I offer this post as work-in-progress on the dhuni. Indian cooks have taught me so much; this post is my modest research into a little-known technique – to celebrate the dhuni… before it goes up in smoke.

What can YOU do to keep the flame alive?

Buy one of the books I’ve listed… or email me, and I’ll share any of the recipes I have.

Buy a bag of lumpwood charcoal… or call me, and I’ll send you some of mine.

Meet two Indian men doing very different things with turmeric – and meet one confused food blogger.

The tiny charcoal brazier stands 12 inches high off the patio – about the height of a seated baby – and a whole team of adults fuss around it as if were a new born child.

We’re sitting in the garden of Punit and Sanjana Kothari, in Jaipur. I have been in India for 48 hours, and in that time I’ve enjoyed more hospitality from the Kotharis than you’d expect from a whole country in a month. They’ve taken me to meet the city’s most famous paneer wallah; paid for me to swallow a flaming, camphor-coated paan; escorted me to markets; fed me; poured me drinks until late in the night.

But now we’re stepping up a gear. To experience a truly authentic Rajasthani feast, we’re sitting cross-legged on rugs in Punit and Sanjana’s garden, enjoying food cooked over charcoal… served on leaves… and eaten with fingers. There isn’t a utensil in sight – just the essential ingredients of heat and hunger.

The food is some of the best I’ve ever eaten.

On the far side of the brazier are a man and wife who’ve come to prepare the rotis. They’re dressed in the flowing robes and headscarves that would look out of place anywhere except the pages of a glossy Indian tourist brochure – or a Rajasthani wedding. The man feeds the charcoal, and adjusts the vents. His wife rolls and cooks the rotis. They are very good at what they do.

To my left are Punit and his wife Sanjana; to my right is their friend Pankaj. We’re eating a traditional Rajasthani dish – dal baati churma – and I am learning new things. I am learning that a seemingly impossible foodie combination doesn’t just work… it’s irresistible.

Spiced dal + roti + melted ghee + heaped jaggery = bliss.

And this blog is going to be my personal dal baati churma.

I’m going to try to take two very different stories that maybe wouldn’t sit together in a regular foodie post – and blend them into something new.

India has taught me that you can happily mix stuff that shouts ‘don’t’.

This post is my attempt to blend savoury and sweet in one story.

Punit and Pankaj are men in their early 40s. They met at school, aged ten, and started a friendship that’s lasted a lifetime.

Today, they both use Rajasthani food to create magical effects for the people who consume those ingredients – but in very different ways.

If you’ve eaten in one of Vivek Singh’s restaurants, then you’ve sampled the fruits of Punit’s hard work. If you paused over the freshness and pungency of a dish with turmeric – or wondered at the brilliant red hues of a dish with Kashmiri chilli – thank Punit. He’s the guy who grows the spices exclusively for the Cinnamon Group in carefully selected areas of Rajasthan, dries them, and airfreights them direct to London. Ten days before your curry was brought to your table, Punit was overseeing the drying and grinding process in Rajasthan.

Punit and Vivek worked together when both were starting their careers in hospitality. Their careers took them both to Bangkok. Years later, when he launched the Cinnamon Club in 2001, Vivek wanted to take Indian cuisine to new heights. One of the people he called to help him was Punit.

Punit remembers the conversation: “Vivek called me from London, and his question was this…. ‘how do we capture the flavour of the freshest chillies?’ We worked together to find the answer.”

For the last 14 years, Punit has perfected the process that keeps the Cinnamon restaurants supplied with the yellowest, freshest turmeric and the reddest, freshest chilli. For foodies interested in the minutest detail of provenance, the tumeric on your plate has been dried in the earth before harvesting; the chilli has been sun-dried for seven to ten days (depending on the season and temperature) before being turned to tan on the other side for another week. It’s then ground, and flown straight to London. Every shipment is tested for organic purity, and in over a decade only one single batch has failed (by 0.5 microns).

Looking to the future, Vivek and Punit are working to source more organic spices together from India, including cumin, black cardamom, coriander – and, of course – cinnamon.

Punit’s passion for spices spills over into the way he and his family cook and look after guests. As we eat, I ask myself if I’ve ever been looked after more generously by new friends – and the answer is ‘no’.

So much for the first serving of this blog – a story of shared, foodie passion for fresh ingredients.

The next serving is less traditional.

Both involve the power of fresh turmeric – but that’s where the similarities end.

The year is 2008, and Pankaj and his family are sitting by the hospital bed of their eight year-old son, Bhavya. They have been told their boy has days or hours to live.

Twelve days earlier, Bhavya had been diagnosed with dengue fever. Each year, up to 500 million people worldwide contract the disease. The vast majority recover in a matter of days. Tragically, 20,000 people die.

Listed as a tropical disease, dengue fever is spread to human beings by mosquito bite. Early stages include a high temperature, vomiting, muscle pain and skin rashes. In a tiny minority of cases, the disease goes on to cause a collapse in the number of the patient’s blood platelets – followed by internal and external bleeding – and death.

For the average reader of this blog, your platelet count will be between 150-450k per microliter of blood. Bhavya’s platelet count was at 6k. His blood pressure had collapsed, his breathing was shallow and he was bleeding from his eyes. Despite every effort by the hospital to help him, Bhavya was entering the final stages of dengue shock syndrome. The hospital had exhausted every known remedy.

In one of the hospital corridors, Pankaj was approached by a stranger. The man was visiting a relative, had heard about Bhavya’s condition, and had come back to offer the family a natural remedy.

The man wasn’t a doctor, had no medical training – but offered Pankaj a remedy for his son because he’d seen it work before. Pankaj agreed to try it – totally at the family’s own risk.

Pankaj vividly remembers the conversation with the stranger. “He said the remedy could make my son’s platelets go up – but that he was worried. He wasn’t sure. He said it had to be my decision. I told him that I was ready to try anything. I trusted him.”

Three days later, Bhavya was fully recovered.

In the following days, Pankaj tracked down the stranger to thank him. They discussed the recipe: an infusion of turmeric, combined with aloe vera juice, papaya leaf and neem leaf.

Pankaj immediately wanted to share the cure with others: “Why shouldn’t other people have the happiness my family felt to see our son recover?” He made small batches at home. If he read about a local patient with a blood platelet crisis, he took a batch to the hospital. Some accepted, others didn’t.

Word spread. As the season for dengue fever came around each year, from September to November, people made their way to Pankaj’s house. At first, he prepared cures for 100 people a month. Today, he might treat as many as 2,000 people a day. He has never charged a single patient.

To get to this kind of scale, you need a lot of back-up – and the network built slowly. “Punit supported me from the start,” says Pankaj, “and that made me strong.”

Following Bhavya’s cure in 2008, Pankaj – together with his father, mother and wife – distributed the cure as a cottage industry. In 2010, members of the wider family and local community joined in. “They recognised the cause,” says Pankaj, “and saw how happy it made us to be involved. They came forward to help.”

Today, the 17 year-old Bhavya helps create the cure that saved his life – along with dozens of other children from the community. “This was the ‘wow’ moment for me,” says Pankaj, “when our kids and our neighbours’ kids understood what we’re doing, and wanted to help mankind.”

The cottage industry has turned into a big deal. Doctors and medical journals contact Pankaj; businesses give him raw ingredients for free; his employers give him paid leave each year from September to November.

Eight years on, Pankaj has shared the remedy with over 100,000 dengue sufferers – with 100% cure rate, and no recorded side-effects in any patient.

As he tells the story, Pankaj has two gears. Describing the science behind the disease and the cure, he’s buttoned down and detailed – talking about platelet types and numbers, blood pressure levels, physical processes. It’s like talking to a doctor.

But ask him about his interaction with the people he helps to cure – and he beams. “One father of a recovered child asked me what he could give me. He said I could take anything he owned. I told him he owed me nothing… that I’m just a medium… and he should thank God, not me.” His face lights up – and I sense is that every patient cured reconnects Pankaj with the joy of his son’s recovery.

Other than the sheer physical fatigue of the role (Pankaj gets up at 4am in fever season to work for 18 hours on preparing cures) his only complaint is when someone tries to sell the cure. Batches sometimes get onto the black market, and are advertised for around IR 500 (£5). Pankaj has to track down the seller, and get the remedy back.

Beyond that, he sees every part of his huge volunteer role as a privilege. “If I help mankind,” he beams, “God will help me.” He’s one of the most contented people I’ve ever met.

So where does that leave the two halves of my blog – the sweet and savoury?

As a foodie, I find it completely natural that Punit should be flying Rajasthani turmeric thousands of miles to give diners in London the best possible experience. I understand what’s happening.

As someone who’s only ever know western medicine, I’m excited that Pankaj’s remedy has cured over 100,000 people of dengue fever – but I’m also confused. I’m confused because the cure is created by one family in their home – and not sold by a pharmacist in a tamper-proof bottle, with a brand name and a best-before date. I don’t understand what’s happening. I want to believe, but there’s a western, cultural brake in my head that won’t let go.

Shouldn’t the numbers be enough? 100,000 cured! What more evidence do I need? I ask myself… if Pankaj had patented his cure, branded it, charged for it – would I find the evidence easier to accept? Sadly, that might be true. The power of western marketing has tinged my thinking.

Years ago, I read about a family in Hyderabad who treat up to 500,000 asthma sufferers a year – with a secret remedy of a live fish swallowed whole. Meeting Pankaj, I have the privilege of encountering another of India’s leading healers. And if Pankaj himself is part of the cure… if it’s his belief, the strength he finds in his family, friendships and religion which helps heal so many people… does that change anything?

The warmth from the brazier spills over the rugs towards us. Punit takes a thick roti from the charcoals, and breaks it into molten crumbs in his hands. Sanjana pours over ghee, and teaspoonfuls of jaggery – and serves it to me with the sharp, spiced dal.

It is delicious.

India has a lot to teach me about mixing sweet and sour; about mixing science and belief. I have a lot to think about.

Eat like a God in Varanasi

When I asked him what I should do on a trip to India, he replied: “Go to Varanasi; eat at the Nadesar Palace.”

He told me I’d never forget these experiences.

I won’t.

Is it just me, or does almost everything in India come back to food? I’m looking at the evening sky in Varanasi, and the setting sun looks so much like a piece of tropical fruit that I want to grab and eat it.

Four of us are standing on an elegant, stone-flagged patio, drinking tea. We’re sipping from the tiny earthenware cups which chai wallahs use across India. Every time I raise the clay cup to my lips, I inhale an intense aroma of earth.

And suddenly, the distinctive smell takes me back to my early childhood – when puddles were as inviting as swimming pools, and the mud on your hands smelt as edible as chocolate. It’s an intense, happy memory.

But it feels at odds with the place, because we’re standing in the Nadesar Palace: probably the most exclusive hotel I’ve ever set foot in, and as far from muddy puddles as you can get.

From the moment the gates at the Nadesar Palace swung noiselessly open before me, I knew I was stepping into something new. And before I could actually take a step, a turbaned chauffeur invited me to settle into my private golf buggy – and piloted me towards the hotel.

Arriving in India two weeks earlier, I’d been exploring the country and its food – and loving every second of it. I’d sat cross-legged in the garden of a Jaipuri family and shared a Jain feast cooked over charcoal. I’d explored countless bazaars; enjoyed dozens of varieties of street food. I will treasure those moments for ever.

But this was going be different, because I was stepping out of my comfort zone. I was swapping my life of budget travel for a pleasure dome where over 40 staff cater for just ten couples – in a Maharajah’s palace.

If you’re looking for luxury, you’ll discover lots of it at the Nadesar Palace.

But because this place is rooted in the soil and history of Varanasi – centre of the Hindu universe – the real luxury at the Nadesar Palace is discovering more about you.

My journey at the Nadesar Palace starts with Chef Saurabh Mathur – the man whose cooking Vivek Singh urged me to try. Dressed in gleaming chef’s whites, Saurabh invites me to join him on a tour of the palace grounds.

For any guest, this would be a pleasure. For me, as a foodie, it’s a joy – because the 26 acres around the palace are the open-air larder for the palace’s kitchens. Mango orchards, fields of yellow mustard, heads of flowering onion for kalonji seed, beds of fresh turmeric, … even wood apple trees… they’re all here. Pristine, organic.

As we meet each new crop, Saurabh explains when it will be picked, which dishes it will feature in and how it will be cooked. Although we won’t sample it today, I’m intrigued to hear him describe the drink served to guests as they first arrive: a fresh sherbet concocted from wood apple. The drink is unique to the Nadesar Palace, and I make a mental note to ask him some day for the recipe.

Saurabh is a natural host, and knows how to bring the grounds and everything inside them alive for guests. I’m in a state of grace – and we haven’t even got into the building.

Inside the palace, we’re welcomed by Piyali Pal, the Nadesar’s Wellness Manager. Piyali starts by explaining how guests are greeted at the hotel in regal style… as Maharajas.

Even as a verbal description, it’s giddying. As a physical experience, it must be off the map.

Following the Indian protocol for welcoming royalty, the first thing guests hear is a blast on a sacred conch – as they enter the palace under embroidered parasols. From there, you can choose to follow as much of an authentic Maharaja’s journey as you want: from consulting with the palace’s resident Hindu priest on your personal astrology – to taking a purifying bath in rose petals, milk and holy Ganges water. During this abhisheka ceremony (translates as ‘coronation’) you experience the formal, ritual anointment of a Maharaja.

It’s as close as any of us will get to becoming Hindu royalty.

The mere sight of the sunken ‘Jiva’ bathing pool – afloat in a small sea of fresh rose petals – is enough to make me want this Maharajah lifestyle very, very much.

Piyali continues with the physical tour of the hotel. And if this place looks like an authentic Indian palace – that’s because it is.

In an innovative business move, the descendants of the Maharajas connected with palace are still very much part of the place today. Having agreed a joint venture with the Taj Group in 2002 to convert the building to a hotel, the family continue to be very involved in their heritage. Much has changed since the last Maharaja lived here – but the original family portraits, stately furniture and much else besides are exactly where the family put them. The desk where you check in is the Maharaja’s own.

Like a lot of historic buildings in India, the Nadesar Palace has been home to a number of dynasties – the East India Company and British Raj have both left their mark. But since the late Maharaja Lt. Col. H. H. Prabhu Narayan Singh conceived of it in 1889 as a place welcome distinguished guests – including King George V and Queen Mary – the palace has continued to do just that.

It’s the real thing.

And as Piyali explains, the same goes for each experience at the Nadesar Palace. The conch-blowing welcome for guests may sound a bit Hollywood (or Bollywood) – but it’s based on the Hindu shanka ceremony, where a conch is blown to signal an auspicious start.

“None of this,” explains Piyali, “is done for show. Like everything in the Hindu world, there’s a logic to it… nothing happens by chance.”

Which brings us to the heart of what the Nadesar Palace is trying to do.

“For more than three thousand years,” says Piyali, “people have been coming to Varanasi to think about the things that are important to them, to learn more about their belief and about themselves. We’re part of that tradition. The Nadesar Palace can be a place that helps you think, and connects you with what you want to do next.”

As we all know, Varanasi is the holy city famed for its open-air, riverside cremations. It has the most bewildering energy of anywhere I’ve ever been. Imagine a city as ancient as Stonehenge, with the spiritual complexity of Jerusalem, the culture of Rome… add in Glastonbury crowds… and place it all on the bank of a holy river. That’s Varanasi.

I cannot even start to unpack it.

Sharing her wide knowledge of Hindu and Indian culture, Piyali takes me on a virtuoso virtual tour of the city and the best of its giddying 108,000 religious monuments. “108 is a sacred number in the Hindu universe,” she explains. “As always, there’s a logic to it. The diameter of the Sun is 108 times the diameter of the Earth – and the distance from the Sun to the Earth is 108 times the diameter of the Sun.”

Over half an hour or so, Piyali connects me to Varanasi’s Hindu deities, temples, traditions – and their connection with modern India. By the end of our virtual tour, the Nadesar Palace has fully shape-shifted in front of us. From modern hotel, it’s morphed into an extension of India’s oldest, most spiritual and most thought-provoking city.

I need something to eat.

If you read Amitav Ghosh’s outstanding novel, Sea of Poppies, you’ll come to the chapter where the character Neel Rattan Halder – a Rajah in 19th century Calcutta – tries to negotiate the social minefield of a dinner party with Europeans.

Tradition dictates that the Rajah must eat alone.

“We didn’t plan it this way,” jokes Saurabh, “but you’re going to eat in the Nadesar Palace as a Maharaja – completely by yourself.”

And so it happens

Sitting at a table on the patio – in front of the series of fountains – the only human beings I can see are the musicians playing classical Indian instruments, on a stage to the side of the building.

Otherwise, it’s just me, the candle on the table, and the warm Varanasi night. Just like a Maharaja.

Some time later, Saurabh places a thali in front of me.

True – it’s a metal tray, about a foot across – but that’s the end of any similarity with any thali I’ve ever eaten.

What’s in front of me is ‘satvik khana’ – which translates as ‘food fit for the gods’.

So much for the name. The history which created ‘satvik khana’ involves thousands of years of research by Hindu rishis into the properties of every ingredient. Not simply the taste – but also its impact on different parts of the body, on its ability to promote health – and even its ability to enhance spirituality.

I’ll let the Nadesar Palace’s menu talk for itself: “Satvik – pure vegetarian food – is prepared without the influence of onion and garlic. Bringing calmness, purity and balance – it promotes longevity, intelligence, strength, health and happiness. If you are pursuing spiritual advancement, then purity of thought is said to depend on purity of food.”

From a Western perspective, we normally set the first hurdle for food as ‘tasty’, and the next as ‘healthy’. That’s as high as we ask food to jump. The possibility that the dish in front of you might have an impact on a specific part of your body, on your mind – or on your soul – simply doesn’t come into it.

There are seven pots of food on the thali in front of me, and four types of bread. I recognise most of the food from my tour with Saurabh.

As we walked through the gardens, he’d explained the essentials of ‘satvik’ cooking: using the simplest possible spices and ingredients, and sourcing as much as possible for the meal from the exact place and moment where it will be eaten. Satvik philosophy goes much deeper than ‘food miles’. Coming back to the logic of Hindu ‘connectedness’, the conviction is that the earth you stand on – and the season you’re in – will give you exactly what you need to thrive today. In each season, the land around you will provide precisely what your body and mind need.

From a western perspective, it’s quite a leap. Look at the average UK shopping basket (or Sunday supplement recipe) and both are packed with ingredients from far-flung continents and seasons. It’s about as far from the ‘satvik’ approach as you can get.

But right now, I’m in India, and the food in front of me has been cooked by a man who trained in Rishikesh to prepare ‘satvik’ food – and who shares the Hindu belief that what you eat directly impacts on your body and soul.

The seven pots and four breads in front of me are some of the most simply spiced Indian food I’ve eaten.

It tastes divine.

Pausing between mouthfuls to admire the different flavours and textures, it takes me almost an hour to eat the thali.

It is as special an eating experience as I’ve ever had.

As I come to the end of the meal, late into the evening, there’s a chance to thank in person all the people who made these experiences possible: Saurabh Mathur, Piyali Pal – and also the hotel’s Senior Manager Ananth Gaddala and Executive Chef Anup Gupta – who graciously welcomed me into the Nadesar Palace, and encouraged me to talk to their team. When I asked Ananth and Anup for their thoughts on the Nadesar Palace, they both insisted that they trusted Saurabh and Piyali to have shared the information I need.

It’s late at night when I finally leave the Nadesar Palace, and head back across the couple of miles to my hostel in central Varanasi. I flag down a cycle rickshaw, and I’m floating so happily from my visit that I instinctively offer to the driver to swap places – inviting him to sit under the canopy, while I pedal. It feels right. But he won’t have it.

I feel very, very peaceful.

Am I this serene because I’ve eaten food fit for the Gods?

Is this what it feels like to eat food from the ground you’re standing on – and to be in tune with the moment?

I honestly don’t know.

Other people have been thinking about this for thousands of years; next to them I have no insights to offer.

And in terms of the Hindu web of cause and effect, were these experiences the unfolding of some irresistible, universal logic? Was I meant to go the Nadesar Palace? If so, what happens next?